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Bot or not? Algorithm can spot the machines in your Twitter feed

This article was taken from the January 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online.

Twitter spam sucks. But research from London's Imperial College suggests a new approach to filtering it.

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By analysing the time stamps on nearly 165,000 tweets, neuro-scientist Aldo Faisal and computer scientist Gabriela Tavares were able to tell -- from activity patterns alone -- whether an account is home to a bot or marketing stooge instead of a regular person.

They can even forecast the timing of your next tweet -- providing you're human. Bots, it turns out, are less predictable than people. Those annoying tweets that arrive like clockwork each day? They're actually your friends.

This article was first published in the January 2014 issue of WIRED magazine